Christian interpretation of Switchfoot

friday, we talked about how there are certain things in a relationship that make it divine, that make the relationship really work, and if these things became fake or just ritual or systematic, then the relationship, in a sense, fails. it fails to really mean anything, fails to have purpose. and how, in a relationship with God, the divine things could be separated into three categories: worship, prayer, and devotion. and in worship, like singing songs to God and straight up praising Him, if we ever begin to belittle it, it is like we are falling into fake or ritual or system, and it is like the relationship is not only ceasing to grow, but it is ceasing to mean anything. i'm not sure if that makes sense. when you start treating a relationship like a chore, it is almost like it stops being a relationship.

it is easy to sing worship songs. if you do it long enough, you can get to a point where you can sing and sing without ever realizing any kind of significance of what i am saying. and the purpose of the lyrics and the songs is not that we sing the songs, but because they're supposed to point us to truths, they're supposed to get us going in communication with God, we are supposed to be getting closer to God and having our hearts opened. it's easy to sing the songs, but it's so much harder to have your heart changed.

you wouldn't exactly know it by listening to their songs, but Switchfoot has a Christian label. if you search the songs out, you can find Christian themes scattered all over the place, though i'm not sure they make so much sense if you're not looking for them. and when Switchfoot came out with a hit single a couple of years ago called Meant to Live, everybody would listen to the song and watch the music video on MTV and remark what great guitar riffs there were at the beginning of the song and everyone would sing it. one time, i tried to figure out what it really meant, the chorus at least: "We were meant to live for so much more, have we lost ourselves? Somewhere we live inside, somewhere we live inside." And i spent some time trying to figure out what this line meant, but couldn't figure it out until maybe a year later or so, when i randomly understood. it is talking about how God has called us to live higher lives, how God has called us to become so much more than who we are, and when it asks "have we lost ourselves," it is asking, have we become so disillusioned and separated from ourselves that it is no longer us who live, but some other part of us that lives for a different meaning of life, like gratification or satisfaction or accolade. it is about how we want to live for God, we want to live for higher purpose, but it is like we have our lost ourselves, and we can't figure out who we are anymore, because what we do and what we want to do have become two entirely different things.

one of the first things that mike told us when i joined the youth group was that, instead of just singing the songs on Sunday morning, we should actually try to mean what we say, and it was more important to understand what was going on or even talk to God than to be singing blindly without any substance in the lyrics. and on friday, he said the challenge was to stay honest, to be genuine and real and honest in our worship. not to treat it just like something we have to do, but like a real engagement with God, like a real conversation, something that actually matters.

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i made this blogger because i wanted somewhere to put my more relevant thoughts, other than xanga (which is ironically, hardly visited). and now that i have like two people reading this, i really shouldn't stop.

mike challenged me to go my freshmen year without really dating someone. like, i could go on dates and stuff, but he told me not to sexualize it, not to start thinking "maybe she's the one" right after meeting her. he said it was more important to be around girls and get to understand healthy relationships with them and whatever, that if all i ever do is look for "the one," then i won't be ready for her whenever she's right in front of me. he said that if all i ever do is worry about dating and marriage and things like this, i wouldn't ever be ready for it.

he has all of these stories of heartbreak, of times he was sure it would work out, of what he really thought was love. and, after everything, after all of the heartbreak and the disaster and the questioning and the crying, he finally ends up with what God had for him...and a relationship that he really does recognize for being relevant and significant and where God wanted him to be. and so...i'm not sure i'll ever know what's going on until years later down the road when things will have hopefully worked out, when i'll be able to look back and see that things were always taken care of and that i shouldn't have been so scared or tired of waiting because things wouldn't have worked out if i had had my way...